100% Grass-Fed

Our family farming history began with my great-great-... (nine generations ago) grandfather Johannes. He, his wife and three children left Saxony, Germany, on April 20, 1734, aboard the ship St. Andrew, mastered by Capt. John Stedman. They landed at Philadelphia on Sept. 22 and eventually settled our family’s first "New World" farm near Society Run in Frederick Township, Montgomery County, Pa., in 1743. Pig farming was our family’s specialty until the mid 1950s. A lot has changed since then. Our BQA cow–calf operation includes 100% grass-fed registered Red Angus, Hereford and purebred Beefalo; 30 to 35 pastured Duroc and Spot pigs; 100 Freedom Ranger broilers; and 90 Golden Comet and Buff Orpington layers. We organically maintain 80 acres, comprising 15 acres in rotational pastures, 15 acres in tillable cropland, and alfalfa/mixed grass hay on the balance. We have never used chemical pesticides or herbicides on our pastures or hay fields. We are not a "certified" organic farming operation, but we prefer the natural/organic approach to help promote sustainability.

Why Not Chickens!?

Mar 30, 2010

Why Not Chickens!?

Heather Karsten, assistant professor of crop production and ecology at Penn State University, says that when pastures are managed carefully, the whole agro-ecosystem benefits.Grass holds soil in place and keeps it from eroding. Grass root mass is like a big sponge, absorbing and retaining water. And grass’s roots are dying all the time, “putting more organic matter into the soil, which contributes to soil aggregation and better water and air infiltration, and to more diverse biological activity, nutrient release, and carbon sequestration,” Karsten says. “The most fertile soils around the world developed under perennial grasslands. Animals are out there grazing their own forage, managing their own feed, and spreading their own manure, so there’s not as much labor, equipment, storage facilities, or energy involved for the farmer. And grazing systems, if they’re well managed, can be very profitable.”

Grazing is good for nutrition.

Cows graze. Goats graze. Horses graze.

Why not graze your chickens?

Animals with just one stomach, like chickens and people, don’t have the digestive micro-organisms needed to get all their nutrients from pasture, but there are advantages to raising even chickens on grass. Poultry raised on fresh pasture instead of stored grain get more unsaturated fats and vitamins in their diets. It’s like the difference between fresh and canned vegetables. Pasture-fed chickens can also get bonus nutrients by eating grass-dwelling insects.

And grazing chickens on a pasture that has already been munched on by ruminants helps with the break-down and spread of manure. The chickens’ diet must be supplemented with grain, says Professor Karsten. She also goes on to state that she thinks it could still be cheaper to raise chickens on pasture and grain than on grain alone. We have done our own on-farm studies on a much smaller size scale than the University, but we have found that the chickens only need a very small amount of grain/layers mash during the winter. From April until December our free-ranged chickens don’t eat any supplemental grain, the yolks are a dark yellow/orange in color and the shell’s are durable/thick.

Not all grasses are equal, however. “The leafier the plant, the higher the digestibility for the animal,” says Karsten. If a pasture is overgrazed or the grass is too mature and “stemmy,” the nutritional benefits fall off. And in a recent study, Karsten and Ellen Seconi, a graduate student in agronomy, determined that legumes like alfalfa and clover are higher than grasses are in omega-3 fatty acids, which are thought to lower health risks including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and autoimmune disorders. Armed with this information, Professor Karsten and Paul Patterson, associate professor of poultry science, set out to find the best pasture-plant species for optimal nutrition for the animal that could then be passed on to the human consumer.

Over a six-week period, Karsten, Patterson, and undergraduate assistant Gwendolyn Crews rotated 25 chickens from grass, to red and white clover, to alfalfa, grazing them for two weeks on each species. To facilitate rotation, they designed a mobile chicken coop, otherwise known as a “CHICKEN TRACTOR”, with help from students from the Agricultural Systems Management Club. The coop, which could be towed around the field on wheels with a small tractor, 4 wheeler or truck (when pasture conditions permit), provided the chickens with food and water, protected them from predators, and served as a nest box. During each rotation, egg samples were taken and analyzed for levels of unsaturated fat and vitamins in their yolks. The researchers then compared eggs produced on each section of pasture to eggs taken from chickens raised in commercial cages on a typical grain diet.

They found that the pastured birds produced about three times more omega-3 fat in their eggs than did birds raised on an industrial diet. Regarding the best pasture mixes, “On average across all these periods, the mixtures highly dominated by legumes — clover and alfalfa — produced 18 percent more omega-3 fat than grass alone,” Karsten says. Eggs from the alfalfa pasture had 25 percent more omega-3s than grass-produced counterparts. “In absolute amounts, this was not a very big increase,” says Karsten. “But with more research and some different feeding regimes, it might go higher.” Pasturing also boosted levels of vitamins A and E. “On average, we saw about twice as much vitamin E and 40 percent more vitamin A in the yolks of pasture-fed birds than in the caged birds. The longer the animals were on pasture, the more vitamins they produced,” Karsten says. “From this study we confirmed three nutritional advantages of raising hens on pasture as compared to on an industry diet in cages: the increases in omega-3 fatty acids and in vitamins A and E. We also found that differences in omega-3 levels in plants have an effect on the eggs. And we learned how to manage chickens on pasture.”

— Joanna Lott

As I stated a week ago, I read an article about overwintering chickens on ground alfalfa hay. I'm still researching this process and as soon as I accumulate enough information to relay a good option for us pastured poultry growers I will let you know. This option is harder to find info./studies on because it's not widely practiced. Yet!

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Anonymous4/2/2010 03:22 PM

You need to move back to the 50's and 60's.......your ideas would have fit right into that era. You try and sell your agenda as it is something new and in fact there is nothing new in any of your ideas.....but rather you just want to turn the clock back to the days when everyone raised chickens and milked a cow.We used to have our chickens outside in the summer time and they ate what ever they could pick up, but in the winter when it was 20 below our chickens would not go outside to graze. You have all the answers.......Why did our chickens want to stay in the coop and eat grain in the winter time instead of going outside to graze?Or did we need to ship our chickens south for winter grazing?

Anonymous4/2/2010 04:29 AM

Is pasture raised bird meat just as tough as that grass fed beef? It sure takes a hell of a set of teeth to get through that grass fed stuff boys.

Vines & Cattle3/31/2010 03:18 AM

There are people making a good living pasturing pork, beef and chickens. Imagine customers knocking down your door for the food you produce. Joel Salatin is now pulling down 2.5 million per year pasturing pork and poultry. As for feeding the world, I've never seen the world eating corn on any travel shows.